Wednesday, 7 September 2016

Between Universes

Holger in the Old Phoenix:

"'After a lot of mishaps - the last with a clutch of Aztec gods, and I barely escaped in one piece - I'd picked up enough assorted hints and clues that I could fumble myself to this inn.'"
-Poul Anderson, A MidsummerTempest (London, 1975), Chapter xii, p. 102.

Alianora, after hearing Holger:

"The feathered demons or were they pagan gods? - who ate hearts and drank blood made her shiver..." (Multiverse, p. 47)

Valeria to Holger in the Old Phoenix:

"'I even deduced there had to be an interuniversal nexus. That's how I found the Old Phoenix. You did it by accident, didn't you?'" ( A Midsummer Tempest, p. 96)

Holger to Alianora's family:

"'I spent all those years wandering from one world to the next, or else in some of the places between them all.'" (Multiverse, p. 53)

"'...the Old Phoenix...It's one of those places between the worlds that I was talking about. It doesn't belong to any of them.'" (p. 58)

Neil Gaiman tells us that there are six free houses owing allegiance to no realm. They include the Inn of the Worlds' End (see here) and I think the Toad Stone.

1 comment:

I thought of another reason to be dissatisfied with the premise of Turtledove's "The Man Who Came Late." In A MIDSUMMER TEMPEST, we see Valeria tutoring Holger in the science of how to travel between universes. That should have SHORTENED the time needed for getting back to the Carolingian world. But Valeria's efforts at teaching doesn't seem to have helped Holger.